How to cure anosmia...

Well, I'm officially an one month plus anosmic. I can still feel something from time to time especially when I'm hard blowing my nose, but except from this.. nothing. Funny in a certain way because I used to be highly sensitive to smells around me and also a very demanding gourmand. Now, good steak tastes like wood, good wine tastes the same as bad wine and plus it gives me a runny nose (so does the beer - I'm an yet unable to find the reason why).

Some people say that anosmia is a normal consequence of a long lasting sinusitis and that it is only temporarily but in my case, the first symptoms appeared in the beginning of January and lasted since so I'm beginning to wonder about the this "temporary" character. While my doctor explains me that my nose is still stuffed (I can feel this, okay..) and this is why the smell can't reach the appropriate receptors I read that long lasting sinusitis can cause irreversible damage to the olfactory epithelium which will obviously lead to permanent anosmia.

As for the cure, I'm yet unable to find one for me but here are some that worked for other people:
- antibiotics: if it's an infection causing your nose to swell then antibiotics to help you fight it is the cure. Once the infection is gone, and the swelling (usually follows an infection and tends to linger for long) is gone then your smell will return (hopefully this will be the case for me)
- nasal corticosteroids together with antihistamines: this if the main reason for your nasal swelling is of allergic nature. Both nasal corticosteroids together with antihistamines are meant to help you react less to potential allergens hence decreasing your swelling and allowing the air to correctly reach the olfactory cells. Be aware that this is a long run treatment so you should follow it for about a couple of weeks before its effects will reach their max.
- systemic steroids like prednisone: haven't tried those yet because of their wide range of side effect but they appear to be highly effective.
- time: time is a last resort solution. wait and see... the human body has amazing recovery capabilities.

eLiberatica 2009

eLiberatica 2009 – The 3rd Edition,
22nd – 23rd of May 2009 (Friday-Saturday), University Politehnica of Bucharest, Romania.

One of the biggest events of its kind in Eastern Europe, eLiberatica brings community leaders from around the world to talk about the hottest topics in FLOSS movement, demonstrating the advantages of adopting, using and developing Open Source and Free Software solutions.
Beyond this, the event try to promote these open and free concepts in other fields, covering but not limited to, media, digital civil society and education.

This year, the conference target an audience of around 500 people: IT and FLOSS personalities, young and committed specialists, guests from European Union, Romanian social and business personalities and at least two ministers.

The two days of presentations and debates will focus on Open Source in an Economic Downturn.

The conference will have multiple tracks, special events hosted (Open Agile Romania, Mozilla Event, Open Media Event, and more), surprise guests and lots of practical workshops.

For more information you can check http://eliberatica.ro/2009/ website.

The (java) world is changing... JavaFX is alive an kicking

A "cool" NetBeans error message

I made something stupid but my IDE is trying to ign ore it (lol).

I'm playing around with NetBeans and JavaFX lately. I don't yet have a fundamental technical opinion about the framework but I know for sure that me and the guy that wrote the attached error message think alike (great minds, huh ?)

Circuit City goes out of business

It seems that the economical crisis is starting to leave a mark on the U.S. retailer companies. The second biggest Consumer-electronics retailer chain goes out of business as of 17.01.2008. The official reason for this seems to be their failure to reach an agreement with their creditors.

I'm still hopping (I am definitely not the only one since it seems that almost 34.000 Americans will loose their jobs because of this) than someone will make a good take over offer on the last 9 yards.) In the meantime,
Good bye Circuit City.